


hold on when you get love and let go when you give it

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coulson is great at emotional support, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff, Future Fic, POV Skye (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Scars, Skye's identity issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-28
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-27 07:31:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2684480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the things they've learned about her origins Skye doesn't understand how Coulson can look at her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold on when you get love and let go when you give it

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hamsterfactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterfactor/gifts).



She has fantasies of slipping out before anyone notices, taking the keys to one of the cars and just leaving, but she knows how futile those fantasies are and when Coulson knocks on the door to her bunk in the Bus she knows she shouldn't have expected anything different, and if anyone can change her mind – 

"Packing already?" he asks. He looks closer. "Or packed."

She turns around, leaves her leather bag full of the most essential essentials on the bed. Coulson looks at her, somehow surprised that she has already her jacket on, that everything is going so fast. He must have thought she would wait longer, after she told him her plans.

Skye feels a bit guilty, but it's not like they are never going to see each other again.

He stands by her door, arms crossed.

She is too tired for a confrontation right now. The last 48 hours have been exhausting for everybody. Skye pretends to go back to her bag, shifts a couple of shirts inside, talking to Coulson without looking at him.

"Look, Coulson, if you come to change my mind about–"

"What do you need?" he asks.

She turns around.

"What?"

"I came to ask you if you needed anything for the journey," he explains.

Skye looks at him and somehow manages to smile. This is what Coulson does.

"I'm fine. I travel light."

"Okay."

"I can find him."

"I know that," Coulson says. He sounds tired too. "Everyone knows that."

"I have a better chance of doing so on my own. It'll be quicker and less dangerous."

She has been rehearsing those reasons in her mind. Her father showed no desire to hurt Skye's team in the future but she can't be sure. The man is not precisely reliable. But she has other reasons to want to do this alone, which she suspects Coulson must suspect.

"I know you all think I must have gone crazy or something, after what he's done."

Coulson's expression is complicated. He's the Director and Skye's father put his men at risk. But he also helped stop Whitehall from killing, well, everyone. Maybe he worries about his influence over Skye. Maybe he just worries. Skye doesn't feel like she has earned Coulson's worry. Illogical – it's not exactly her fault, where she comes from – but she can't turn it off. Not right now. The distance will do them good. Hopefully.

"It's not that I want him to be my father or anything, make up for all the years," she adds when Coulson says nothing. "But I have questions, there are things I still want to know, about my mother... about everything. And he owes that to me."

"Are you sure you want to go alone? The team –"

"I'm sure," she replies. "For many reasons."

He doesn't ask, even though she knows he wants to. Skye is not sure this is the right call, or even the reasonable one. She's not sure what she will find and how it will affect her. She's not sure who she'll be when she comes back. That might be all right because she's not sure of who she is right now. Raina had said something like that, hadn't she, about Skye having _no idea_.

It's not that she expects to find those answers, but she knows there are no answers anywhere else.

And he doesn't expect Coulson to understand.

"I know he's a monster, but... he's my father."

Coulson nods.

"And it might do the team some good," Skye adds, looking away, because she can't say this while staring at him of all people. "It'll give everybody time to process the fact that I'm not... exactly human."

He takes a step towards her, frowning. His mouth curls almost severly.

"They don't need time. Skye, nobody cares about your origins. They care about you."

She shrugs. She wishes it was enough, to believe in that kind of platitudes.

"Maybe they should. We can't pretend nothing happened. We can't pretend I'm... the same as before."

"You are. No one thinks about you differently."

"They do. And it's okay, I don't blame them, doesn't mean it's a bad thing. I think about myself differently. _I_ don't like the idea. I need time, too."

"Skye..."

He sounds really tired. Like he somehow doesn't have the stamina to deal with her insecurities right now but he does it anyway. Skye wishes she didn't know the nuances of his voice so well, but she can't turn that off either. She can leave, though. For a while.

"Aliens are scary," she mutters, but loud enough, and lamely and it sounds way too self-pitying in her mind. Her father might be a monster but at least he's not a _monster_.

"You're not scary," Coulson tells her, tries to tell her anyway.

Skye lets out an ugly chuckle. "How can you be so chill about this? You of all people?"

He turns his head a bit, confused.

" _Me of all people_?"

She looks down. He must have thought about it, many times. Deep down he must resent her. Coulson is a kind man, but he's a complicated one, he must at least feel an ambiguity about her now.

"Yeah. You more than anyone else should want to stay away from anything alien forever. I don't understand why –"

"You don't understand what?"

"Everything shitty in your life it's because of aliens. An alien did that to you," Skye says, gesturing towards his heart. "And then the same kind blood I have did a lot worse to you. I don't understand how you can even stand to look at me."

"Skye."

"What?"

His expression softens. Skye can't read it.

"I do a lot more than just stand to look at you," he says.

"What do you mean?"

And Skye normally prides herself in reading the mood well but she is definitely surprised when Coulson grabs her head in his hands and presses his mouth to hers. Yes, she is usually pretty good at telling when someone wants to kiss her (it's almost a survival tool at this point) so this is all around pretty Earth-shattering. Not in a bad way. Coulson wanting to kiss her could never be a bad thing.

His tongue is a little tentative – which, well, _obviously_ – but the way he cradles her head and the way he slides his mouth over hers, confident and sweet, to her surprise Skye finds herself enjoying it. It's a pretty good kiss.

He pulls away soon (too soon?), his expression uncharacteristically doubtful, trying to assess if he has made a mistake. Mistake? No. Skye is surprised. She never thought... okay, now, _that_ would be a lie. But she never really thought about it seriously. Until now. She needs more data.

"Let me..." she starts, moving towards him.

She grabs him by the shoulders, a bit unsure of the gesture, but bold, smashing their mouths together. 

It feels like Coulson is suspicious of the gesture somehow, barely kissing back, merely opening his mouth enough to let Skye slip her tongue inside.

But she can tell the moment something clicks in his head and he realizes that she is kissing him because she wants to. He grabs her hips and turns her around, pushing her against the door as he kisses her.

It's kind of intense.

"Definitely more than _stand_ to look at me," she says when she breaks the kiss. She tries to smile at him but she's too freaking nervous to manage.

"I'm sorry."

"Wow," Skye says, because, well, _wow_.

"Yeah."

"I didn't know."

"I was counting on that," he says, reluctant and tilting his head to one side. Coulson's kind of cute, she realizes.

And she has to admit, her mood is completely different now. She's probably going to have a huge freak-out about this at some point but right now her fears, the whole of them, are almost completely soothed by all this kissing. The kissing with Coulson. It should sound wrong in her head but it doesn't, no matter how many times she repeats it. Kissing Coulson. Kiss-ing-Coul-son. Nope. Still sound okay. Still _feels_ okay.

"Is this some kind of bad news/good news sort of situation?" she asks him. "Bad news you're an alien, an evil one possibly, good news Coulson's really into you?"

He smirks at her for a moment. "I didn't know I qualified as good news."

He's being smug, isn't he? But then his smile slips a bit and Skye can see there's some real insecurity deep down. Skye feels almost fondness at that.

"Good news for sure," she reassures him. "I mean, it took me a moment to process that being an alien wasn't the weirdest thing that could happen to me but I'm okay now."

She means it as a joke but Coulson frowns.

"I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."

"No, I'm telling you," she says, trying to stop him from backtracking. "This is great. I love you."

She didn't mean to say that and no wonder he looks so shocked. She _didn't know_. It just felt natural to say it so she did. Because it's true.

Coulson touches her cheek.

"You're not an _evil alien_."

"That's the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me," Skye tells him.

She kisses him again.

This time she gets to push him against the wall while his mouth opens under hers, following her lead. Skye likes this, likes the idea: she leads and Coulson follows. And judging from the noises he is making at the back of his throat it seems like he finds following quite, er, _pleasurable_ , as well. She feels a tension bubbling inside of her. A tension she didn't know was there, or she had forgotten all about it. She needs to follow it, she needs to speed things up.

Her hands slip under his jacket, tugging at him in a very specific way. Coulson notices and disentangles himself from the kiss, gently.

"We don't have to..." he starts. Then tries to recover some resemblance of control over his voice. "Wait. We can wait, Skye. I'm in no hurry."

"Well, _I am_. I'm leaving town today. There'll be time for you to be gentlemanly and sweet when I come back. Right now I need you to undress."

She's kind enough not to point out that those suits of his can't hide everything so he'd better not bullshit her on that.

Coulson nods and obeys. The undressing part is a bit of an overstatement because they don't get that far, exactly. She clears the bed – putting her bag and her papers on the floor – and lets Coulson peel the leather jacket off her. She had forgotten how that felt, another human being taking off her clothes, the little gestures of sex and before sex. She hesitates to do the same, sliding the lapels of Coulson's suit between her fingers, realizing the absurdity of what she is doing, how shocking it feels, wanting this right now. But then Coulson gives her a reassuring smile and starts undoing his tie himself.

"What?" he asks when Skye looks at him weird as he takes off his shirt and places it carefully on her desk.

"Nothing," she replies. Shaking her head and leaning over to kiss his cheek.

He's the sweetest lover Skye has ever had. She shouldn't have expected anything else from Coulson, really. He takes his time even though they don't have much anyway. He lies her on the bed and slips her jeans off her slowly. She holds her breath. Coulson kisses her thighs, her knees, almost playfully. She had imagined she'd be more anxious about letting him see her, touch her like this. It's not that Skye doesn't like sex – because she totally likes sex, for the record – it's that it normally takes her a while to relax about the idea of being in bed with someone. She might not look like it (and Skye knows exactly what kind of impression she leaves, and has exploited it so much she almost believes it herself) but she can get pretty shy about this stuff. But the little kisses are so nice and she has always felt safe with Coulson and he has said she's not scary and when he looks at her again he seems a little breathless and it's beautiful.

It's not shyness, no, that's not what Skye was worrying about.

To be honest, after the whole Ward debacle – and that was enough to make any girl _close for business_ so to speak – Skye couldn't imagine ever being interested in a guy again. But here she is.

"You okay?" Coulson asks, when he sees her distracted, kissing her neck.

Skye nods.

She props herself on the matress a bit and twists her fingers into the helm of his white undershirt. Coulson lets her do it, lets her pull it over his head. He has a great body, which – she's not being shallow, it goes with the whole Coulson-ness of it all, but it makes desire hit her again, because she might love him, she always has, but this right here is not just some kind of shapeless and innocent form of love, she actually wants the guy.

But also seeing him, seeing what has been done to him, like this, in the open, yeah. Skye stops, gripped by sadness and shame.

"Oh," she lets out when she sees it. She doesn't know what she thought it would look like. Not like this. Not so real.

Coulson takes her hand in his and brings it against his chest, guiding Skye's index to the line of his scar.

She holds her breath for a moment. The line of hardened, scarred skin reminds her of what she is.

"I'm fine," Coulson tells her. "It's nothing. And it's not your fault."

She nods without replying, overwhelmed.

If Coulson feels any ambiguity towards her because of her genes it must have been silenced by his love. Yes, Skye uses that word. He loves her. He must do. She has no other way of explaining how it feels to be held by Coulson, and how it feels when he runs his fingers across the skin on her stomach, the top of her thighs and tenderly and sweetly between her legs until she lies back against the pillow and relaxes a bit. That is good. He knows what he is doing, and Skye is ever so grateful, because she is still too anxious to give decent instructions if he didn't. He manages to get her wet enough to slip two fingers inside before Skye points him in the direction of the condoms she keeps in her drawer. She wants to make excuses for that, talk about her sense of responsibility even when she didn't think she'd ever, ever – but then she remembers Coulson wouldn't be a douchebag about those things. He just seems pleased she is so prepared.

And then suddenly there's more nudity in front of her than Skye thought she was ready to witness. Coulson is not just a guy, he's not just any guy. He's Coulson. A bizarre mix of confusion and arousal takes over her, she can feel it in every nerve ending. She wants to simultaneously laugh at the whole situation and also wrap her fingers around him. She does nothing, she just watches Coulson get himself ready with a couple of long, hard strokes.

He doesn't take off his pants, just like Skye didn't take off her top. He just shoves them and his underwear down his hips. She stares at him while he rolls the condom over his dick and she can tell Coulson feels a bit bothered by it, almost looking annoyed at her for a second. She puts two and two together and realizes that possibly most probably it's been a while for him as well. After all, she has lived with the man for a year and a half and even during those months when they barely spoke Skye knew he wasn't travelling around the globe having torrid affairs while recruiting allies on the side. She's pretty sure of that.

He climbs on top of her again, positioning himself with some difficulty – this damned bunk, Skye swears next time they'll do it in Coulson's bed.

"Tell me what you want," he asks, sliding his mouth along her neck, hot and wet. His voice is wonderfully strained.

How do you tell your middle-aged boss that you want him to fuck you and you're possible in love with him? That's what Skye wants to know. She's glad she told him she loved him before she knew what she really meant by that, there's no way she could manage now.

It's so weird, all these things she didn't know were in her head and her heart some minutes ago.

"I want this, right now," she replies. "I want you. I want _us_."

He lets out a little moan when he hears her and then he pushes into her. 

It feels so utterly strange that Skye lets out a soft laugh at the sensation. Coulson stops and stares at her.

"Sorry," she says, lifting her head to kiss him briefly, just barely touching her lips to his. "It just hit me... it _really_ has been a while for me."

She arches an eyebrow to drive the point home –there's no way she's getting much more graphic than this with her boss– and he smiles back at her. She knows she doesn't have to ask him to go slow.

"Fine, but you're okay, right?" he asks.

She nods and then he starts brushing his thumb across her cheek, looking at her like she is indeed not human, but in the good sense, looking at her like he can hardly believe she's real. Skye knows the feeling. And god he really is the sweetest guy. She threads her fingers with his and wraps her legs around his waist. He starts moving into her and _utterly strange_ melts into something else, something Skye can't qualify (she is going to need further, er, experiments on the issue, in the future) and then it melts into something pretty spectacular for a first time and a tiny bunk and through it all Coulson never stops looking at her like that.

Afterwards they lie next to each other, a bit awkwardly, and not just because of the space. They are not sure how they should behave now. Coulson has pulled up his pants and Skye has recovered her underwear and is thinking anxiously about how quickly she needs to leave, how quickly the trail is going stale. She doesn't want to leave right now, of course. She has to.

She touches Coulson's hair, gingerly and shy, unsure what the rules are now. She wants to indulge in a lot of stuff, but just because they just had sex Skye doesn't know if she can do this sort of thing now. Coulson seems unsure of it himself, resting his head on Skye's shoulder. 

But Skye doesn't regret it. She's glad they've done this. And here. 

"You don't know how many fantasies I've had of doing it in this bunk with you," she tells him.

He looks up. He looks thoroughly kissed and raw and a bit confused. A good look on him. He looks younger.

"Really?"

"I used to have a huge crush on you when I first joined the team."

" _Really?_ "

He looks like he totally believes she's making this shit up.

"I got over it fast but yeah," Skye confesses. "It was only natural; you were so mysterious and smooth and you had a flying car. Hey, it seems like I didn't exactly get over it, uh."

She kisses him. Back in the day her crush was kind of abstract and harmless. She never really considered those feelings real. And then she moved on to things she thought were real and possible, like Ward. Everybody, including herself, expected that was going to be the story, at some point. Coulson and her didn't make sense. But then again her life doesn't make much sense right now. She's beginning to feel hopeful about that.

"And you?" she asks.

The line of his mouth softens, almost regretful.

"I was twice your age and I was your superior. I couldn't consider it."

She gets that. Like, she wishes she could tell him how much she gets that and how much it doesn't bother her. Coulson is the kind of guy who would consider something like this sleazy, at least in theory.

"Why now?"

"I don't know," he says. We almost died, Skye wants to point out, which would be a good reason. "I have the feeling I'm not going to see you in a while."

She smiles. Coulson sees this as an opening and he wraps his arm around her, slipping his hand under her top, tracing the shape of her ribcage with his thumb.

"I'll call every day," she promises, pressing her lips to his brow.

"You'd better. It's an order."

"Pulling rank... that's sexy."

"Is it?"

"Only because I know you don't mean it," she says with a little yawn.

She runs one hand over his back lovingly. She finds the matching scar there, smaller than the one on his chest, and it still affects her. _Something like me did this_ , she thinks. She wonders, she still wonders how Coulson can stand to look at her. He must love her a lot.

He looks up from her shoulder. He's serious now.

"I could go with you to find your father. I mean this one."

She believes that.

"I know you do. But no, you can't come with me. You have a job to do. I need you here."

She likes the idea of having someone she can come back to, because then it doesn't matter so much, what she finds out there, with her father, because now she has this. She had this before, she has always had Coulson, but not like this.

"I know you have to leave," Coulson says, but he's holding on to her tightly. "I'm sorry."

Skye closes her eyes.

She doesn't feel like complaining about her tiny bed anymore. It's nice to be close and uncomfortable together. She tangles her fingers in his hair again, tugging gently. Coulson lets out a low, happy groan.

"I guess I can stay five more minutes," she says.


End file.
